Size and speed of your site is now going to effect your Google rankings. And if that doesn’t matter the web is going mobile and mobile download speeds are not very fast. So there’s no time like the present to check your site speeds and speed things up on your site.

1 ) Reduce image size:
This is probably the single most effect thing you can do. Just how big does that header photo need to be? There are several options online that will reduce your image size for free. Just Google ‘reduce image size’.

2 ) Use height and width tags in your image link and make your image the same size it will be displayed.
You don’t want the browser to have to adjust the image every time it loads.
Every image link should include a height and width tag. This allows the browser to continue to load up the page and fetch images last.

4 ) Use only the plugins you really need.
It is nice to see the weather on a garden website but does a site about blog design need a weather icon? Only use plugins that give useful information to your users. Also remove any unused plugins from your website. Many load even when not activated.

5 ) Clean up your database.
PHP MyAdmin makes it very easy. Look for junk. I was amazed to find several plugins I had installed and removed left behind over 300 entries in my options table.

I. Back up your data base
II. Remove the junk
III. Click the overhead number ( or size ) on the table list and under ‘Space Usage’ at the bottom click ‘optimize’. This is similar defragging your harddrive.